[quote=bearishgurl][quote=earlyretirement]. . . You’re right it can be done more affordably. Check out http://www.homeexchange.com if you can. While we would never swap with our primary residence we live in, we have all of our rental properties we own up and we get exchange requests just about every day for all over the world.
Airline tickets are still very expensive flying for 4 but at least most of the times we don’t stay in hotels anymore. Some of the places are incredible. Never had a bad experience doing a lot of screening. And in many places people have offered to let us use their car.
We don’t do the car swap just for liability reasons but the home swap is a GREAT way to travel in retirement. We are spending next summer in Paris and in the French Riviera all on home exchanges….. January in Lake Tahoe on a home exchange and February in San Francisco on a home exchange.
Check it out if you haven’t already…. the way to travel…[/quote]
Thanks, ER. I have thought of this. My home is in a walkable community with a lot of public transportation nearby and only 10-11 miles from dtn SD and about 9 miles from the Int’l border. I actually COULD lock up file cabinets and “stage” my home for a “Home Exchange.” However, I have issues with pets being cared for at home while I’m out of town and also a resident kid attending year-round school, so this idea is unworkable at the moment. As I posted here last year, I have stayed in South Lake Tahoe a few times as guests in other parties’ timeshares – for the sole purpose of skiing Heavenly.
These opportunities will always be available because timeshare owners cannot often use their weeks and need reimbursement for their 1/52 portion HOA dues and property taxes that they have to pay every year, whether they use the property or not. This route is more comfortable, has more amenities, sleeps more people and MUCH cheaper than commercial lodging, due to the high transient occupancy tax in Lake Tahoe (to fund needed firefighting services and improvements).
I LOVE both Lake Tahoe and SF. I can stay in SF for free with my kid(s), who have free slant pkg and also are on bus line(s). One can ride ALL DAY in SF (bus/streetcar/cablecar/BART) for just $2![/quote]
Ah, yeah it’s tougher if you have pets but MANY of the home exchanges we have done but they kept the pets with someone else or a neighbor. We didn’t want the responsibility of it.
Maybe when your child is done with school it will be workable. A few of the home exchanges we have done have been 2nd homes or vacation homes but the overwhelming majority are places where people live as their primary residence.
Definitely you have to have a lot of trust and do a bit of screening but we’ve not had any negative experiences in over 30 exchanges around the world.
You’re right about Lake Tahoe and the endless amounts of timeshares there. We’ve gone to Lake Tahoe every year on home exchanges and going again in February.
Plus once you make some good connections, you have a place to stay each year. We’ve become good friends with some home exchange partners and do home exchanges with them each year. Really convenient when it comes to expensive cities like London or Paris or New York City.
I always recommend home exchanges to anyone close to retirement or especially those that own rental properties. It sounded really strange to me a few years ago before we started it but now it’s become almost a way of life for us to see the world and experience life as locals in every city we go to.
